Lobster Mushrooms in Whiskey Sauce (aka faux Dublin Lawyer)

For this St. Patrick’s Day week, I was determined to develop some special vegetarian dishes tasty enough to stand up to their traditional seafood or meaty counterparts. This dish, a take on the Irish dish Dublin Lawyer, exceeded my expectations! Plus, it is simple enough to whip up quickly, provided you have the ingredients on hand.

The original version of this dish includes lobster in a buttery, creamy whiskey sauce. There are many things to love about that, unless of course you can’t eat seafood, or just don’t feel like it that day. I myself am probably best described as a semi-pescatarian; that is, the large majority of my diet is vegetarian, but a couple of times a year I’ll have a little seafood as kind of a treat, mostly while traveling. I’m a Newfoundland girl, after all. But for this dish, I decided to go with lobster mushrooms instead, which of course are not exactly like lobster, but pretty awesome in their own right, have a slightly similar flavor, as well as appearance.

While vegetarian, this dish is shall we say…a WEE bit on the rich side, so it is lovely for a special occasion, a dinner party or what not. I did lighten my version somewhat with a light cream and less butter. If you wished to lighten it further, you could serve it over rice, potato or even toasted bread. I served mine in vol-au-vent pastry, and there was enough for two main dish servings. You could also serve this in appetizer sized pastries or toast points. All good!

For the recipe:

1 ounce dried lobster mushrooms, soaked in cold water for a couple of hours*

*if you are fortunate and have access to fresh lobster mushrooms, you will need about 1 1/2 cups chopped for this recipe. I used Misty Mountain brand dried mushrooms for my dish.

Place a saucepan over low-medium heat, and add butter. Drain the mushrooms (do not squeeze out excess liquid, in fact, reserve a couple of teaspoons for flavor), and cut into chunks. Once butter is melted and bubbling lightly, add mushrooms and saute for a couple of minutes. Whisk in flour and cook for about a minute. Whisk in cream and whiskey. Increase heat to medium and continue to cook for 5 minutes or so, enough to allow mixture to thicken and for some of the alcohol to cook off. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Serve immediately on top of prepared pastry shells or other options as noted above. Sprinkle with chopped chives.